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General Director David Gockley’s final season features some of his favorites: Verdi’s Don Carlo, Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd, Janáček’s Jenůfa and a new production of Carmen. Secure your seats and subscribe today!

San Francisco Opera invites you and your family to attend FREE screenings of our Opera-in-an-Hour Movies presented throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. To learn about where you can catch a screening of our family friendly operas, click here.

Why in the world would a 95-year-old-lady, doddering along with a cane, be asked to share her thoughts about the intricate world of opera? Because if you’ve traveled the world, as I have, to see 63 complete Ring cycles and countless other operas besides, you want the world to know why you’re so passionate about opera and why it’s so important to keep this priceless art form thriving. Opera has enriched my life beyond measure, and my financial support of San Francisco Opera—including my legacy gift—will help enrich the lives of others in the coming years.

I have received several inquiries into why we are performing our upcoming Magic Flute in English. It’s a good question that deserves an explanation.

In Mozart’s time (late 1700’s), Italian was the language of opera. The genre of Italian “opera seria” crossed the Alps and settled in Austria, Germany and England in particular. Audiences in Austria attended “court operas,” supported by the nobility and presented in theaters that were near–or a part of–royal or lordly palaces. One can remember the image of Mozart’s operas being performed in Vienna’s Burgtheater in the film Amadeus. Lots of powdered faces, white wigs and bitchy courtiers. After Cosi fan tutte, Mozart fell out of favor with the Austrian court and lost his salaried position. He was also losing his health.

Jun Kaneko, renowned Japanese-American visual artist, is the Production Designer for our new production of The Magic Flute, opening June 13, 2012. His ceramic, bronze, and glass sculptural work and two-dimensional artwork appears in numerous international solo and group exhibitions annually and is included in approximately fifty museum collections. He has realized almost thirty public art commissions in the United States and Japan. His previous opera productions were Madama Butterfly for Opera Omaha (2007) and Fidelio for the Opera Company of Philadelphia (2008).

While Hollywood geared up for the Oscars this past weekend, we in the Education Department prepared for our own celebration of film: free screenings of Puccini’s The Girl of the Golden West for Families at the Herbst Theatre! The movie was a shortened, one-hour version of the production that premiered at War Memorial Opera House in June 2010.

For thirty-five years I’ve maintained that the classic works of the American Musical Theater are fit to be in the repertoire of opera houses. In many ways they ARE our opera. Many were composed for “legit,” unamplified voices, with sizable choruses, orchestras and dancers.

Introduction

Backstage at San Francisco Opera is a fascinating, fast-moving, mysterious and sacred space for the Company’s singers, musicians, dancers, technicians and production crews. Musical and staging rehearsals are on-going, scenery is loaded in and taken out, lighting cues are set, costumes and wigs are moved around and everything is made ready to receive the audience. From the principal singers, chorus and orchestra musicians to the creative teams for each opera, in addition to the many talented folks who don’t take a bow on stage, this blog offers unique insight, both thought-provoking and light-hearted, into the life backstage at San Francisco Opera.